Everyday family life involves a myriad of mundane activities: for example, recurring soccer games, piano lessons, doctors' appointments, work schedules, relatives' visits, family outings, softball practices, after-school activities, and much more. These events must all be scheduled and coordinated between family members and then re-scheduled if things do not go as planned or conflicts arise. As a result, family life often requires a complex routine for awareness and coordination to manage the everyday activities that constitute work, personal, and familial aspects of life. This notion of family coordination extends beyond the home to also encompass activities while on-the-go or at work. For example, it involves scheduling appointments while at the doctor's office or checking the family calendar at work for evening events.
Despite families using various organization schemes, coordination among family members still remains an everyday problem for many people. Paper calendars are one tool used by families to help stay organized: they are easy to use, personalizable, and create an instant archive of family activities. Yet the downside is paper calendars are not available outside the home or available to more than one family member at a time when one member is at home and one member is away from the home. Thus, sharing paper calendars between multiple family members can be challenging if not impossible most of the time since there is typically only one copy of the paper calendar. Families are limited to keeping the paper calendar centrally located such as in the home which restricts access to it when away from the home.
Many families have turned to conventional electronic calendars as a possible remedy. However, these often take time to open (e.g., computer boot-up time) and may be inconveniently located in one room of the home. Access to these electronic calendars can be difficult too since they may not be readily available once outside the home. Overall, either electronic or paper calendars can be hard to synchronize when multiple calendars are used.